


To exist, and to be

by pastelprince



Category: Cardcaptor Sakura
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Internal Monologue, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 18:41:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16180928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastelprince/pseuds/pastelprince
Summary: Yukito finds a home in the love that makes him real.





	To exist, and to be

**Author's Note:**

> an exploration of Yukito's thoughts regarding his memories and his love for Touya.  
> I want him to feel okay ;;

Loneliness is an intricate thing.

While the word itself refers to the sorrow that comes with being alone, or having distant relationships, or not having spoken to somebody in a while - loneliness runs much deeper than all of those things. It’s as equally painful, however, regardless of how simple or how convoluted the cause for its presence is.

It's breaking down whilst everybody you love showers you with adoration, or perhaps the feeling of disconnect from the person you're speaking to, or even simply not believing a word of what anybody says, no matter their love or integrity.

So it takes a while for Yukito to realise that no, he's not lonely - not really.

Loneliness, as fleeting anguish, certainly became familiar to him. After a long day of school or work, a rush of familiarity and comfort is supposed to accompany your step inside the front door, glad to be back to a place filled with warm familial memories, hot drinks and handmade cooking. However, for Yukito, that first step inside the front door was a mere, reluctant acceptance to a sense of dread and frosty pretenses.

The grain of warm-coloured wooden flooring beneath his feet was suddenly cold with the realisation that he had not ever truly rushed up and down the hallways as a child. He had never even been a child. Memories - images, he should say, of letting ladybirds crawl across his fingertips and planting apple cores which never grew in the flowerbeds, were simply that. Images.

And what better word could there be to describe the despair he felt upon finding out that every source of childish wonder in his personality was completely fake, than utter insipid, soul-crushing loneliness? Every sweet, nostalgic memory of a family that never were and a friend never made settled on his chest in a warm haze, and then were promptly doused in a shower of cold, strident reality. The loneliness of having memories which were not truly shared with anybody, and knowing that everything he had been heartily fond of was built from the synthetic memories of a synthetic person, was incomparable.

And so, for Yukito, home was a morose reminder of that. Of his artificial state of being, and of people he loved and cherished who didn't really exist, and so had never loved him in return. 

Feeling like you're no one is one thing -  _ knowing  _ you're no one is completely another. 

Another, much more intense level of loneliness. Nevertheless, Yukito was not lonely. 

 

After high school ended, and university life approached, he and Touya found their own home together. It was only then that Yukito began to understand that home didn't have to be a lonely place, even if you were no one and had nothing.

He could finally stop. Home stopped becoming a harsh reminder of tender recollections which never were, and started to become a place where Yukito could form new,  _ real  _ memories which made him feel like an actual person.

Touya made him feel like an actual person.

He would probably scold Yukito if he knew he was thinking such things, since to Touya, Yukito could feel that he was just as normal as any other person. Or, daring to go a little further, he was much more special to Touya than any normal person. His and Touya’s very real, very ordinary classmates with actual families and friends and memories and lives - they were no more than acquaintances.

Yukito was the one who woke up with Touya’s arms cradling him as if he were the most important being in the entire galaxy, and home-cooking which was truly meant only for him, and didn’t serve as a simple image to fool Yukito into thinking he was just like any other human. Touya would invite him out onto the balcony to drink tea and read books when the sky was particularly dyed by incandescent corals and blues, dispersed throughout purple clouds in the cityscape sunset. Touya would remove his glasses with as much tenderness that the human hand could muster, and kiss his lips and his nose with reverence unfurling through his sharp eyes and across his cheekbones. Touya would sprawl on the sofa with his legs entangled with Yukito’s to watch mind-numbing TV programmes after an exhausting day at work, and when Yukito made a joke, his expression would morph into an endearing smirk, trying his best not to laugh (but very obviously failing). 

Such a home that was so day-to-day, and yet so extraordinary at the same time, put Yukito’s severed mind at ease. Yes, perhaps he really did only have two friends and fake memories of sitting on his grandmother’s lap. Yes, perhaps his entire existence had just been a necessary convenience for someone  _ else’s _ life. 

But he was still Yukito. He had his own likes and dislikes, his own thoughts, anxieties, hobbies, relationships, expressions, language, beliefs, sexual orientation, dreams, humour, empathy - he had become  _ someone,  _ and whoever he had become, he knew he was loved by those he was close to. And, knowing so, he eventually became at peace with his false childhood and his false family. He looked back on it with a warm smile, and stopped feeling guilty for loving ghosts of imaginary people, and instead embraced it nevertheless. He missed them. Despite their being illusory, they were  _ his  _ memories, and  _ his  _ family, just the same as everybody else had.

And as more time passed, home became Touya’s hands brushing through the soft strands of hair framing his face before they went to sleep, and the smell of Touya baking caramel sweets over the weekend, and laughs of Sakura making fun of Touya when she and their father would visit. Love became the press of Touya’s lips to his cheek whenever he shook with sobs, and freshly washed blankets already laid on the bed once the weather turned particularly cold. Their small, sparse apartment was so full of life and intimacy that it made Yukito feel real. The more time that passed there, the less guilty Yukito felt to call himself human.

The yellow glow of the street lamp outside flickered in specks through their netted curtains, and the wind of a distant typhoon made the window panes creak in complaint. Yukito’s head was nestled into the side of Touya’s neck, his arms strewn lazily around his back and across his warm, wide chest. Downy pillows enveloped his left ear, and cradled the back of his weary head. Yukito could hear a soft, low mumble of Touya speaking to himself in his sleep, dreaming about whatever his mind had wished to show him on that certain night. Yukito thought he may have heard a distinct murmur of ‘strawberry’, and a laugh caught itself on the back of his tongue.

And finally, he thought, even if this exact moment in time also turned out to be fiction, he wouldn’t mind. It was  _ his  _ home, with  _ his  _ love, for him specifically, and it made him human.

In the flicker of a broken street lamp, despite the fact that he was no one, he was not lonely anymore.


End file.
